


on that you can rely

by polkadot



Series: la vache et le dauphin [1]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polkadot/pseuds/polkadot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan ends up winning in Casablanca, if not perhaps in a way he might have originally anticipated.</p><p>(Also he and Benoit may just have concocted a plan to conquer the world together, but shhh.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	on that you can rely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [halotolerant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/gifts).



> For [halotolerant](http://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant), because they wrote [The You and Me Song](http://archiveofourown.org/works/606757) for Yuletide this year, which is not only pretty much one of my favourite fics of all time, but also the fic that finally pushed me into writing something for this fandom instead just Watching All the Tennis Matches Ever. So thank you, lovely halotolerant, for being lovely, and I hope this pairing isn't too random for you to enjoy. :)
> 
> ~//~
> 
>  **Notes** :  
>  **(1)** Here are Stan and Benoit -
> 
> ....... 
> 
> Stan is an excellent tennis player from Switzerland (#17 currently, won an Olympics gold medal in 2008 playing doubles with Roger Federer), and Benoit is an up-and-comer from France (#33). Last year they started playing doubles together and quickly forged a close and hilarious friendship. If I explained them as thoroughly as they deserve, this would be longer than the fic, so I'll just say that you should totally check them out if you don't know them. They're awesome. :) [ETA: Um, there's now a little shipping manifesto [in the comments](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/2915967). Um. Or maybe...not so little. xD]
> 
>  **(2)** As French is not one of my better languages, everything is in English (except for a couple of actual tweets). Just imagine this is a translated version and everything is actually in the appropriate languages. **(3)** All tennis stats are pulled from the ATP website, except for the "nineteen minutes" one, which is just something I noticed when watching the match. **(4)** The "Roger" in question is, of course, Roger Federer. (The dynamic between him and Stan is a complicated one.) **(5)** Benoit's reactions to losses are based on an interview he gave to _L'Équipe_ (excerpted [here](http://www.menstennisforums.com/showthread.php?p=12521419)).
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Obviously this is a work of fiction about fictional characters and nothing is implied about the actual Benoit and Stan.

~//~ ~//~ ~//~~//~ ~//~ ~//~~//~ ~//~ ~//~~//~ ~//~ ~//~~//~ ~//~ ~//~~//~ ~//~ ~//~  


For a dizzying moment, it’s as if Benoit's exultant tones are pulsing out of Stan’s phone, lighting up his impersonal hotel room with exploding starbursts of colour. 

Then the moment passes, and Stan tips his head back against the sofa, laughing under his breath. Perhaps he’s had a bit too much sun today, if Benoit's easy exuberance is already making his heart pound in his chest and his blood start racing. It’s only Twitter – it’s not as if the man himself is bouncing around the room, expending entirely too much energy for the night before a match.

Still, Stan supposes he could do worse than catch a _little_ excitement. After all, he’s a past champion here in Casablanca, and he’s seeded #1. And even if the sunshine gives him a bit of a headache, it’s still nice to watch it glint across the courts as another clay season gets underway. 

With all these things to make him happy, it’s no wonder he’s still smiling when his phone buzzes a moment later, loud in his quiet room.

_staaaaaanley_

He bites his lip, suddenly aware that he’s grinning inanely at an inanimate object. _where are my !!! ? you have them for casablanca but not me?_

 _staaaaaanley!!!!_

Benoit's fingers are ridiculously quick. Kids these days. _dinner?_

_nah going to a friend’s_

Stan blinks. They both have first-round byes in singles, but their first doubles match is tomorrow, and he’d planned on talking strategy tonight. Still, no reason it can’t wait. His fingers hesitate over the keys. _ok talk tmrw maybe meet 8am brkfst?_

“Oh god, there’s no way I’m meeting you at 8,” Benoit says, kicking the door shut behind him. “Do all Swiss get up so freakishly early?”

Stan whirls around, heart skipping a beat in surprise. “How’d you…”

Benoit looks tired. He drops his gear bag loudly next to Stan’s, shoving them up against the bed, then comes over to flop noisily down on the sofa. “Told the concierge I was your partner. She gave me a key.”

Casablanca’s hot, and the sofa’s small. Stan’s wearing shorts, and so is Benoit; the long length of Benoit's leg pressed up against his own is shockingly warm. Stan tries to shift over to give him some room, but neither of them is David Ferrer-sized, so he settles for quirking an eyebrow instead. “Does she give keys to everybody’s doubles partners?”

Benoit laughs. “Just the cute ones that flirt with her, I think.”

“Ruling you out, then,” Stan says, but his heart’s not in it. Besides, Benoit's probably telling the truth – Stan’s seen the way girls’ eyes follow him, tracing admiringly over his body, seen the way women blush when Benoit meets their coy glances with a merry wink of his own. And it’s not his tennis prowess that’s attracting them, Stan doesn’t think, not like certain people in his past, no, it’s all Benoit. All Benoit.

“You’re just jealous,” Benoit tells him, comfortably, settling into the sofa, splaying his legs out and letting his head fall back with a blissful sigh. “God, I hate plane flights.”

Stan now has ownership of about a third of his own sofa. He rolls his eyes. “I thought you were going over to a friend’s?”

Benoit turns his head to look up at him, eyes innocently wide under laughing eyebrows. “Why, that was all part of my cunning plan to surprise you. Did it work?”

“Yes, I’m very surprised,” Stan says, dryly.

Benoit smiles. He’s going to have laughter lines around his eyes by the time he’s Stan’s age. “Good. Then go order us room service. We have to talk strategy. And then play FIFA.”

“Why do I have to do it?” 

“Because it’s your room,” Benoit tells him, with irrefutable logic. “If I wanted to order room service I would have stayed in my own room. And because,” he adds, pulling a much-folded wad of paper from his pocket, “I’ve brought the draws.”

When Stan hangs up the phone and comes back to the sofa, Benoit throws an arm around his shoulders, loose and matey, and hands him the doubles draw. “Your country is better than mine at resisting German conquest, you tell me how we’re going to take these Germans, huh?”

“Well, first things first, we’re going to avoid mentioning the _Nazis_ to them,” Stan says, but he’s laughing, because that seems to be all he does these days, laugh helplessly while a Frenchman waggles his eyebrows at him, and you know, Stan’s not entirely upset with that.

~//~

“So next time let’s not drop the second set,” Benoit tells him around a mouthful of pasta. There’s a stray strand of spaghetti hanging out the side of his mouth, red sauce on his cheek. “Deciding tiebreaks are too stressful for my nerves. Haven’t you heard the press? I’m mentally fragile.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” Stan asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yes, but I was too busy fucking _your_ mother to pay attention,” Benoit shoots back, laughing.

It’s crude locker room humour, nothing Stan hasn’t heard before, rendered inoffensive by overexposure, and all he finds himself thinking is _god, you’re so young_. Benoit's shoulders are so open, his slumped back so relaxed, his sparkling eyes so unguarded. Stan can’t remember if he’s ever been that young; he must have been, once upon a time, before things changed. Before he got old, and wary, and tired.

Benoit's eyes are starting to look uncertain as the moment draws on, so Stan flips him off, lazy and unhurried, and watches as Benoit snorts with laughter, the red stain on his cheek jumping.

Perhaps Stan doesn’t feel quite so old after all.

~//~

“Okay, so when I said we should stop dropping second sets,” Benoit says, eyeing Stan’s sofa and then apparently deciding to skip sitting on it in favour of flopping down backwards on it like a starfish, like Rafa Nadal after winning Roland Garros, “I didn’t mean we should start dropping first sets instead. Did you hear what I said about my nerves? My _nerves_ , man.”

Stan, following along behind, sighs. Benoit's left his gear bag right in the middle of the room this time, and Stan’s not a certain other person, he doesn’t book penthouse suites with extra rooms just for gear, he has one little room in a sunbaked hotel in Casablanca, barely big enough for his own bags, and if Benoit keeps leaving his shit strewn around one of them is going to break an ankle tripping on it.

“I wasn’t there,” he points out, logically, picking up Benoit's bag and stowing it on the other side of the bed, next to his own. “You can’t blame me for what you do in singles. That’s all on you.”

Benoit grins up at him. “You gonna tell me what I can and can’t do now? You played first, obviously you dropping your first set rubbed off on me. Bad karma, dude.”

Stan looks to the heavens for patience, something he finds himself doing a lot these days, only half because it always makes Benoit dissolve into laughter. 

This time, it not only makes Benoit laugh, it makes him reach up and grab Stan’s wrist, playfully trying to drag him over the back of the sofa. Stan has better leverage, though, and even if he doesn’t often indulge in horseplay these days, he was a boy once and these things come back quickly. He sets his feet and leans his weight backwards; Benoit could let go and let him fall, but somehow Stan doesn’t think he will. 

“You know,” Benoit says, his teeth gleaming, “if you keep letting your bad karma rub off on me, I should really make you pay for any racquets I end up smashing. It’s only fair.”

“You’re responsible for your own racquets,” Stan begins, sternly, but the momentary distraction works, and he ends up tugged half over the back of the sofa, glaring in exasperation down at a giggling Frenchman.

Benoit lets him go, still grinning. “Go order us food. I’m starving.”

~//~

“That sucked,” Benoit says with finality, kicking the leg of the sofa for emphasis. “That sucked.”

“Go abuse your own hotel furniture,” Stan tells him, shouldering Benoit's gear bag along with his own and dumping them both in an untidy pile on the far side of the bed. Time enough to sort all that out later. “Leave mine alone.”

Benoit makes a face, but stops kicking. “Bad enough they spanked us in the first set and made us look like juniors. But then we come back to take it to tiebreak, and we _still lose_?” His wordless groan is quieter than it is on the court, but no less vehement.

“Yes, we know how much you hate those tiebreaks,” Stan says, leaving the sofa to Benoit and dropping tiredly onto the bed instead. Experience sometimes gives a comfortable surety to his bones; sometimes it just makes them heavier. It’s not as if he seriously expected them to win the doubles title – doubles are fun, but it’s not like they’re _that_ good. Any titles they win are welcome surprises, but Stan’s not going to be absolutely gutted if they don’t happen. 

Still. Any defeat hurts. Always.

“Nineteen minutes,” Benoit says, his voice sounding incredibly woeful. Stan’s eyes are shut, but he can imagine the look on Benoit's face, all impotent frustration. He’s felt it too often on his own. Soon Benoit will move on to making fun of himself, turning frustration into comedy, trying to make Stan laugh, but for this one moment they are alike; for this one moment, they share the empty tiredness of defeat that haunts all tennis players – all tennis players, but perhaps most those who have tasted the edge of glory, only to have it slip away again.

But then Benoit is too young for that.

“Nineteen minutes!” Benoit says again, frustration shading into ruefulness. He’s already starting to shake it off then – could he shake it off as easily, if… _1-6 7-5 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 12-10_ , burned into Stan’s brain, _ripped shirt and primal roar of triumph_ , and countless older scars… “Nineteen minutes to take the first set! That’s just ridiculous. How can two old farts play so well?”

“I’m an old fart too,” Stan points out.

Benoit snorts, and then the bed dips under his weight. “Oh please. You’re old, but you’re not _old_. When Knowle turned pro, I was _three years old_.”

It does sound ridiculous when Benoit puts it like that. “He’s still ranked, what, low 20s? Obviously he’s still good. I only hope I play that well when I’m 38.”

As if he’ll still be playing when he’s 38. Ten more years? Stan’s not ageless like certain other people. He remembers telling Ilham, back when they first separated, that he had five more years to make his mark in tennis, that he needed to dedicate himself to the game before it was too late. That was two years ago. (And for all his dedication, what does he have to show for it?)

“You’ll be playing better,” Benoit says instantly, with all the blithe assurance of the young. “The fucking Big Four will finally be gone, and you and me will be the Big Two, huh? You can have Wimbledon if you let me have Roland Garros.”

It’s a sweet fantasy, however impossible. But Benoit has fantasy, and Stan has history… _2-6 6-3 6-3 5-7 6-3, green grass and screaming crowd and crying Scot_ …

“You win Roland Garros, you’re gonna be the French national hero,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even wobble, because the thing about scars is they eventually grow scar tissue. “Win more than Rafa, okay?”

“Pretty sure my nerves wouldn’t hold up that many times,” Benoit says, candidly, and then there’s a hand on his ankle, light but firm, and perhaps Stan’s voice doesn’t hide as much as he thought it did. Behind his eyelids, his treacherous eyes try to betray him further, but he swallows, mastering himself.

“Nah,” Benoit continues, his voice still as carefree as ever, “one or two would be good enough for me. Maybe another final, Rafa’s last stand or something, when it could be a fight to the death and I could smash more racquets than Baghdatis and take it to like 22-20 in the fifth and put myself in the history books, give everyone a match to remember forever.”

Stan could tell him that he doesn’t want to lose a match like that, however epic. 

“If you play Rafa in a Roland Garros final you better win,” he says instead. “Because I’ll be in your box screaming my lungs out, and if you lose I may just have a heart attack.”

Benoit laughs. His fingers are warm on Stan’s ankle, tapping gently. “Between the two of us, you and me, we have maybe one good set of nerves, I think.”

Stan wonders if that’s all it is. Is it just nerves in the end, beyond forehands and backhands and drop shots and aces, is it nerves that decide it all? If he had a certain other person’s nerves, would it be him jetting around the world, picking his tournaments for his own pleasure, and the other cooped up in a tiny hotel room in Casablanca, playing a 250-tournament because it’s the level he’d have a hope of winning?

Benoit's fingers tighten for a moment, then release. “So, I’m gonna order dinner. You wanna be healthy or throw caution to the wind and salve our wounds with pizza and beer?”

“It’s not enough to drink Coke during your matches, you want to drink beer the night before?” Stan says incredulously, “I will _never_ understand you Frenchies,” as the past recedes and the present looms up again, bright with the echo of Benoit's laughter and the evening rays of the Casablanca sun.

~//~

If they’d both won their matches today, they’d have faced each other next, Stan thinks, watching on the locker room monitor as Benoit plays a heartbreaker. Barely loses the first set, fights back with indomitable spirit to level in the second, only to collapse in the third, hemmoraghing away serves, points, games to Robredo’s calm hands. This is what experience is supposed to look like, steadiness, coolness, assurance. Oh, Robredo can still show passion – it comes simmering out on his misses, still as fired up as ever – but in the end he conquers his nerves, he is not conquered by them. He plays like the #5 player he once was, not like the #72 player he now is. 

Benoit's #33, but bagels have no respect for rankings.

Stan’s next on court, without much time in between, so he’s already warmed up by the time Benoit stumbles back into the locker room, head slumped. “Hey,” he says, reaching out to grasp Benoit's shoulder, not knowing what to say.

Benoit makes a strange sound, and then he’s pushing past Stan’s hand and coming straight into his arms, dropping his head wordlessly down on Stan’s shoulder.

For a moment Stan is surprised, but he knows this feeling, the roaring emptiness and the exhausted frustration, and he brings his hands up, his right to Benoit's shoulder, heavy and firm, his left to the back of Benoit's neck, an anchor.

Benoit smells like tennis, in other words terrible; Stan breathes him in, and feels Benoit's breath hot against his neck in turn. It’s not the first time he’s offered (or received) physical comfort from another player, but it’s been a long time since he’s done more than clasped hands, given a cursory hug, perhaps slung a companionable arm around someone’s shoulders. He’s not a Spaniard, not like the two on the other side of the locker room, Garcia-Lopez scrubbing his hand through Robredo’s hair in some bizarre celebratory ritual, Robredo’s arm around his waist, the both of them exulting loudly in Spanish, which Stan really doesn’t care enough to try to understand at the moment.

“Beat that fucker for me,” Benoit says, muffled against Stan’s neck, but Stan understands him.

“Which one?” he says. He’ll play Garcia-Lopez in ten minutes, Robredo tomorrow in the semifinal that should have been him and Benoit. 

Benoit snorts. “Both of them.” His arms, which have been hanging limply at his sides, come up around Stan’s back, turning whatever this is into a proper hug; for a moment, the two of them are impossibly close, pressed up against each other, and Stan’s brain blinks, if that’s possible. He’s hugged Benoit countless times before, but never quite…like this.

Benoit pulls back. His eyes are still as frustrated as ever, although he looks a bit calmer. “Don’t you _dare_ lose now,” he says, voice fiercely vehement, before his eyes clear and he wrinkles his nose. “I need a shower.”

“Yes, yes you do,” Stan says, automatically, making a face himself, and the moment is broken.

He watches Benoit head to the showers without quite knowing that he’s doing it, and then they’ve finished readying the court and it’s time to head out for his own match under the Casablanca sky.

~//~

Coming through his hotel room door, Stan nearly trips over Benoit's gear bag. He’s developed a second sense for these things in the past few months, though, and he executes a neat little leap instead. 

“Oh,” Benoit says, hidden by the back of the sofa, “mind my bag. Sorry.”

Stan’s not entirely surprised to find Benoit here, although he half expected him to be on his way to Monte Carlo already. The way the schedules are, they’ll have precious little turn-around time before their first-round matches. “You trying to sabotage me, Paire? Break my ankle and eliminate a rival?”

He drops his own bag on the bed, then turns to grab Benoit's and deposit it next to the suitcase that’s taken up residence next to the window. Apparently Benoit is indeed on his way to the airport, via a detour to Stan’s sofa. Typical.

Benoit doesn’t answer him. The TV’s on, though it’s muted; it’s a sports channel, and Stan wonders if Benoit was watching his match earlier. Silly of him. Benoit isn’t a certain other person, impossibly busy, only distantly friendly. Benoit's friendship is anything but distant – it’s tussling across the backs of hotel sofas, it’s comforting fingers ghosting across ankles, it’s fierce hugs in locker rooms, it’s close and it’s messy and it’s filled with laughter.

Benoit will have been watching, simple as that.

“Beat the fucker for you,” Stan says, breaking the silence, trying to make Benoit laugh. “As requested. Did it pretty decisively too. No more wind in Spanish sails. What’s my reward?”

After a moment, Benoit sticks his hand up with an unopened beer.

Stan frowns and crosses the short distance between the bed and the sofa. Benoit's nursing his own beer, and he’s got one earphone in, his iPod nestled in the folds of his shirt.

Stan doesn’t have to steal Benoit's earphones to know what sort of music he’s listening to. “Let me guess, Adele?” 

There’s no answer. 

Stan knows the tired frustration you get after you lose a match, knows it only too well, but he’s never quite understood what Benoit calls his “melancholy”. You get sad, upset, you shake it off, you move on. How someone as happy, as carefree, as cheerful as Benoit can wallow like this…

Although usually when Benoit wallows, he does it in his own hotel room. Usually it’s up to Stan to figure it out and go and drag him out again, pulling him protesting into the sun and returning him to his natural good-naturedness, sometimes by shoving him into a pool, sometimes by taking him out on the court and hitting ridiculous tweeners and doing exaggerated Novak-style impressions, sometimes by employing his best dance moves until Benoit can’t stand it anymore and falls over laughing. Usually it doesn’t take long, the melancholy passing as quickly as it descended, and the happy Benoit returns.

This time, though, Benoit's in Stan’s hotel room, not his own, and Stan doesn’t know what that means.

“Hey,” he says, swallowing, hearing his own awkwardness, “look, I know it’s tough, but it’s Monte Carlo next week. Live to fight another day, right?”

Benoit withdraws the offered beer, as Stan hasn’t taken it, and sets it on the table next to the sofa. After a moment, he puts his own beer next to it and sits up, looking somewhere past Stan. “I know.”

“How about we order dinner before your plane leaves?” Stan says. “You could get pizza now just to rub it in that I can’t.” His hand moves, as if to reach out to clap Benoit on the shoulder, but he stops; he’s still not sure what exactly happened this afternoon, and even though he’s pretty sure nothing _happened_ , it’s going to be impossible to avoid a little awkwardness, at least at first.

Maybe it’s that abortive gesture that catches Benoit's attention, makes him look up to meet Stan’s eyes. “I don’t…” 

“You can’t wallow in misery forever,” Stan says, trying to tease him back into cheerfulness. “Come on, I’ll let you thrash me at FIFA, if you’ve got time. When’s your flight?”

Benoit huffs a laugh. The strange lost look in his eyes is beginning to fade, much to Stan’s relief. “I’m not wallowing.”

Stan makes a gesture to encompass the beer, the earphones, Benoit slumped on the sofa. “This mean something other than wallowing in France?”

“Believe me, when I wallow, you’ll know it,” Benoit says, and there’s something new in his eyes now, and Stan can’t look away, even though prolonged eye-contact is not something you usually do with your mates. The moment stretches.

“Well, then,” Stan says, finally tearing his eyes away and reaching up to scrub awkwardly at the back of his neck, “you want pizza? Or shall we skip straight to the FIFA asskicking?”

Benoit pulls himself up to his knees on the sofa in one fluid motion, and Stan looks back at him, mistrusting the glint in his eye. He whips his hands behind his back, afraid – no, _appropriately wary_ \- of an attempt to grab his wrist and drag him into another tussle, but that only makes Benoit laugh and his eyes gleam more. 

“How about,” Benoit says, and Stan can’t look away from his face, that young open suddenly determined face, “we skip straight to this?”

And then he’s leaning up, his hands coming up to pull Stan’s face down – and Stan’s off balance, his own hands still behind his back – and Benoit's mouth tastes faintly like cheap beer, but most of all like _Benoit_.

The kiss only lasts a moment before Benoit pulls back - not far, just far enough that Stan’s eyes don’t cross when he stares into Benoit's and finally finds his voice to ask, “What was that?”

Benoit's mouth is wet, and he swallows, but he still looks so gloriously unafraid. Stan’s own blood is racing, like he’s just run down a Nadal forehand. “I think, Stanley, that was called a kiss.”

It’s so Benoit. All Stan wants to do is to reach for him again, maybe pull him over the back of this damned sofa and drag him the couple of steps to the bed, push the bags to the floor and - and where did this come from! - but maybe it was always there, this wonderful friendship and mutual appreciation, maybe it always had this undertone and he just never noticed it - maybe he’s been blind, so blind -

The moment’s dragging on, and Stan’s a little surprised Benoit hasn’t pulled away, but Benoit knows him, Benoit's giving him time - and then, Stan hasn’t pulled away either. They’re standing on a precipice together, two nervy players caught in a nerveless moment.

And Stan wants to end it, to pull Benoit back in, but…

Benoit's watching him, watching him think, and then he opens his mouth, his breath whispering across Stan’s lips, making him shiver. “Two things you should know. One, I’m not so young, so if you’re thinking that’s a problem, stop thinking it.”

Stan _was_ thinking it. 

Benoit drops a hand to Stan’s shirt, spreading his fingers across Stan’s chest. Stan can feel each and every one of them. “You're 28. I’m 23. When you were 23 you won the Olympics. I bet you didn’t think you were a kid back then.” 

Stan didn’t. He remembers being on top of the world. He remembers everything from that year.

“I turned pro _six years ago_ ,” Benoit informs him, tapping his fingers slowly, then grinning as their rhythm makes Stan’s breath hitch. “I know my way around the tour, and I know what I want.”

“And what do you want?” Stan asks, hearing the rasp in his own voice.

Benoit just smiles at him. Perhaps it was a stupid question, with Benoit a breath away and only the sofa between their lower bodies protecting their virtuousness, if Stan’s own condition is anything to go by. 

He chooses a different question, hurriedly, before Benoit decides to kiss him again and steal his remaining lucidity. “The second thing?”

Benoit's grin disappears and he drops his gaze, before bringing it up again, completely serious. “ _I'm not Roger_.”

Stan could have told him that.

If there is anything Stan knows, here in this moment, it’s that Benoit isn't Roger.

Perhaps it’s that, more than anything, that makes Stan relax, the tension going out of his shoulders like water –

(Because this time the laughing reckless youngster determinedly making his move won’t be turned away, because this time a friendship will not turn into awkward distance with one ill-judged, ill-received kiss, because this time Stan won’t lose on the brink of victory: because if Benoit isn't Roger, _Stan isn't either_.)

– and Benoit knows how to read Stan, he always has. His face lights up, sun rolling in, and maybe the only reason Stan doesn’t kiss him right away is because he wants to memorise that look. Maybe there doesn’t have to be only scar tissue in Stan's life, bad decisions made and dazzling opportunities wasted. Maybe there can be moments like this, shining moments when the world's beautiful.

Of course then Benoit rolls his eyes and says, “Kiss me already, stupid,” and so Stan’s laughing into their second kiss, and then Benoit's laughing too, and it doesn’t make for a particularly good kiss, their lips slipping helplessly over each other, their foreheads tipping together.

Stan will always remember it as a perfect one.

~//~

“ _Un peu dur physiquement_?” Stan says, hearing his own appalled tone. “Is this what I’m going to have to deal with from now on? Innuendo on _Twitter_?”

“Be real.” Benoit sounds sleepy, and Stan imagines him lying in bed in Monte Carlo, the phone caught between his ear and the pillow, and the picture makes his breath catch. They had far too little time before Benoit had to throw clothes on and make a dash for the airport, and Stan’s already counting the hours until he’s on his way too. “Did you ever think I _wouldn’t_ use innuendo on Twitter?”

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” Stan says, although now that he thinks about it, it probably should have. He groans.

Benoit's laugh is just as catching as it ever is, even across the distance.

~//~

It’s an hour before he has to go out and play his semifinal, and maybe he should be focusing on getting ready for the match, but Stan can’t quite manage it. For a while he was glaring at Robredo, because if Robredo hadn’t pulled out the win Benoit would still be here instead of in _Monte Carlo_ – oh fuck, he’s already turned into a teenage girl, but surely he’s allowed to do that for like a week or something, there’s got to be a rule somewhere – but Robredo just looked a trifle unsettled and turned away to do more stretches against the locker room wall, so that wasn’t fully satisfying. Beating him would be, though.

He can’t do that for a while yet, though, so he pulls out his phone to check on what Benoit's up to. 

He grins. 

Stan leans his head back against his locker and laughs until he’s breathless with it.

~//~

It’s not a good match – it’s a terrible match, really. Perfect play to begin with, and then…it’s always worse when you play well to begin with, because you know you _can_ beat them. You can, and yet then you suddenly can’t. How many times has Stan raced out to an early lead and then lost it? It makes him tired to think.

“I’m breaking up with you,” Benoit informs him over the phone, as Stan waits for the LHC game to start. “I told you to _beat_ the fucker, not let him beat you.”

Stan rolls his eyes and cracks open one of the beers Benoit left behind. “Yes, Ben, I let him beat me just to piss you off.”

“Sounds like you,” Benoit says, teasing. 

Stan curses him out gently, picking and choosing from the array of locker room words he’s learned over the years, mixing languages willy-nilly, listening only to the helpless laughter of his…his boyfriend on the other end.

It’ll take a while to get used to that, Stan thinks, but he likes the way it sounds on his tongue. He shapes it, soundlessly.

“So,” Benoit says, seizing his moment of silence, “you flying up in the morning? I can come pick you up from the airport.”

They could do that, Stan thinks, and nobody’d probably think twice, unless they wanted them to, and maybe someday they _will_ want them to think twice, someday when it’s not so new and incredible and precious and fragile.

For now, though…

“Nah, you stay put. I’ll come to your room. You’ll probably still be asleep, lazy-head.”

“We going to camp out in my room this time instead of yours?” Benoit asks – and it’s an idle question, Stan knows, but somehow it still makes him tingle. But then pretty much everything makes him tingle today.

“Turn and turn alike,” he says, and smiles when he hears Benoit catch his breath. Perhaps it’s not just him then.

“Seen the draws?” Benoit says, after a second, slightly breathless.

“Yeah,” Stan says. “If I get through Istomin I’ve got Monfils and then Murray. Wonderful.”

Benoit laughs. “I’ll enjoy watching you and Gaël. That’ll be something to see. I’ve got Dodig and then Richie.”

“Frenchmen, Frenchmen everywhere,” Stan says, mock-seriously. “At least in doubles we've only got a Croatian/Czech duo and then Belarus/Romania, no Frenchmen.”

He can hear Benoit shifting in bed, and swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. He wishes, quite suddenly and quite intensely, that he’d flown up to Monte Carlo this evening.

“So I’ve got this proposition,” Benoit says, and Stan lets the sound of his voice wash over him, comfortable and warm. “You’re in Rafa’s half and I’m in Novak’s half. How about we both beat everybody and then meet in the final?”

Stan grins at the ridiculousness of it, even as his brain throws up a picture of the two of them shaking hands at the net, a capacity crowd shouting its lungs out, trophies looming nearby. “This plan involves me beating Rafa in the semifinal, right? On clay? In _Monte Carlo_?”

“Maybe Verdasco will stun him second round,” Benoit says. “Or Gilles in the quarters.”

“I think Simon beating Rafa is even less likely than me beating Rafa,” Stan says, laughing. “But sure, sounds like a plan. Fine. We have a date, the Monte Carlo men’s singles final. Be there.”

He listens to Benoit laugh, as the sun goes down over Casablanca, putting an end to yet another stop on the ATP tour. No, he hasn’t won, hasn’t lifted another trophy to add to the one from 2010, but maybe that’s not all that matters anymore. Oh, it still matters, it matters a hell of a lot, because he’s a tennis professional and he loves the game, loves winning, loves everything about it, despite all the scar tissue in the world. But it’s not the _only_ thing that matters.

Because Stan thinks, against all odds, he might just have won in Casablanca after all.

(“Stanley,” Benoit says, indignantly, “are you even listening to me? I swear, you are the _worst boyfriend_ ever.”)

In fact, Stan’s sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _You must remember this_  
>  A kiss is still a kiss  
> A sigh is just a sigh  
> The fundamental things apply  
> As time goes by.
> 
>  
> 
> _And when two lovers woo,_  
>  They still say, "I love you"  
> On that you can rely  
> No matter what the future brings  
> As time goes by.
> 
>  
> 
> "As Time Goes By"  
> from _Casablanca_ (1942)


End file.
